


in this very strange world

by Ellerigby13



Series: Darcy Lewis Bingo 2020 [4]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Punisher (Comics), The Punisher (TV 2017), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Mob, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Praise Kink, Smut, Threesome - F/F/M, Trauma, Unplanned Pregnancy, authority kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:41:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26230582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellerigby13/pseuds/Ellerigby13
Summary: A little over a year after Darcy put her filth ex-husband in the ground, she's been living happily with Frank and Karen as Danica Lawrence, a well-liked stylist at the local bridal shop.Things change when Wilson Fisk returns to Manhattan, and Darcy is forced to keep a secret close to her chest.  Even surrounded by people she loves and who love her, she's never felt more alone.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Karen Page, Frank Castle/Darcy Lewis, Frank Castle/Darcy Lewis/Karen Page, Frank Castle/Karen Page, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Darcy Lewis Bingo 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1851811
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20
Collections: Darcy Lewis Bingo





	in this very strange world

**Author's Note:**

> Bingo fill for Darcy Lewis Bingo Square Y3: "Typical" and Ladies of Marvel Bingo Square Y1: Authority Kink.  
> Non-Avengers AU, so Peggy and Angie can enjoy the freedom of the 21st century, but Frank and I continue to punish ourselves with the angst that comes with the Defenders-verse.  
> You don't necessarily _have_ to read "tempt my trouble" to understand what's going on here, but I strongly recommend it the way I strongly recommend my students come to Zoom meetings instead of watching the recordings later.  
> If you'd like to listen along to the playlist I made for this strange universe, [knock yourself out :)](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3E25Zxmg6joiOFfJlU7fNM?si=z2z4NuzPQ7a9Jy1ow6FA7w)

_I’m a new soul, I came to this strange world_ _  
_ _Hoping I could learn a bit ‘bout how to give and take_ _  
_ _But since I came here, felt the joy and the fear_ _  
_ _Finding myself making every possible mistake_

In hindsight, Darcy realized that Max had probably been the first to figure it out.

He was the one who, a full three days before she missed her period, lay his big head sideways in her lap and cocked a dark eye up at her, letting out a small, soft whine. She’d scratched at a spot behind his ears and his tongue flicked out to tickle her hand, nuzzling his nose gently against her abdomen. This was before she’d started to feel sick, before the dozen or so times that she’d had to dash from her desk to the bathroom to pee, before even her oldest and loosest fitting bra began to feel unreasonably tight and her breasts began to feel unreasonably heavy and tender.

An uncomfortably short four days after her phone app chimed to remind her that her period was starting, and after obsessively checking her panties for any sign of red or brown or even pink, finding none, Darcy snuck out to the nearest Walgreens on her lunch break to buy a test. When the little blue plus sign stared back up at her, her throat went tight.

She and Frank and Karen had never talked about what their equation would look like with kids. It had always felt like enough, the three of them (plus Max), spending every weekend snuggled up in bed together, losing themselves in each other’s hands and bodies (minus Max). With what she knew about Frank’s family, it never felt like a subject she needed to broach. Never felt like something he might want again.

But now, with her skirt around her ankles and her elbows digging into her thighs, a painful sob rose in her chest, along with something she’d never felt before. Darcy realized that she _wanted_ this. She _wanted_ a baby with these people she loved most in the world.

“Typical,” she sighed, and shoved the empty box to the bottom of the wicker trash bin.

She heard a brisk three raps on the heavy wooden door to the single bathroom stall at the office. “Dee, love? You alright in here?”

It was her boss, Peggy, who wouldn’t call her Danica because her own husband was named Daniel. Darcy had liked it when she started calling her Dee; it was what her mom had called her whenever she scraped her knee or fell sick, and it felt like some small semblance of home, if she let it.

She swallowed the last of her tears, rolling off a handful of toilet paper to press to her eyes. “Yeah, Peggy, sorry, I’ll be right out. I, um...I’m not feeling great.”

“You don’t need to stick around if you’re not feeling well, love. Angie and I can manage the rest of the appointments today, and I don’t want you dealing with any bitchy clients in a bad way.”

She inhaled deeply, flushed the toilet, and snapped the cover back onto the end of the pregnancy test, tucking it into the waistband of her skirt so it wouldn’t fall out. She knew that if she went home now, her head would just run every worst case scenario that came with telling Frank and Karen about this until they returned home too. No, working the store and talking to customers would at least keep the most dangerous thoughts at bay for a little while.

As Darcy had predicted, once she shouldered open the bathroom door, both Peggy and Angie were waiting outside, the former with one hand propped on her rounded hip while the latter at least pretended not to be too worried at her desk, though Darcy recognized the thin line creasing her forehead.

“I can stay,” she rushed, before either of them could protest. “I’d rather hang around the worst bridezilla than go home and panic over WebMD telling me that I’m probably dying of about a hundred different things. Don’t worry,” she added, to Peggy, who she knew would worry regardless of what Darcy could tell her. “I think I just overdid it with the dessert last night.”

Peggy’s eyes were narrowed and her lips puckered, but she took the hand off her hip to brush one of her finely coiffed curls away from her face. “Alright. If you change your mind, though, or if you go even a few shades too pale for me, I’m sending you straight home in a taxi. Agreed?”

Darcy mustered up a smile. “Yes, boss.”

It was a Friday, so thankfully a steady stream of brides-to-be waltzed into Carter’s for first appointments, fittings, and alterations meetings. Darcy was happy to be kept busy darting from rack to rack to find the latest Vera Wang dresses a young bride had spotted in their newsletter, swapping out veils for blushers and lacing up the sheath style that the young lady liked so much.

“How’s that feel, honey?” she said softly, leaning across one broad freckled shoulder to see both of their faces in the mirror. The girl, Alicia, puckered her lips to the side in the universal expression of uncertainty. She was one of a handful of brides who came in alone, no friends or family to pass judgment over the scraps of fabric that a woman would wear for one day in her whole life.

“I like this one better than the last one, but it’s…”

“Not The One?” Darcy asked, gently twisting her smile into one of sympathy. Alicia shook her head.

“Like, I don’t think there’s ever gonna be a dress that I, like, lose my mind over, you know? But…” She took her bottom lip between her teeth, smoothing her hands down the sloping crepe over her hips. “I don’t need to feel that crazy ‘wow’ factor about a dress, I just need to feel…I’m marrying someone who feels like home. So I want the dress to feel that way too, you know what I mean?”

Darcy knew what she meant so hard that it nearly punched her in the gut. The familiar sting of tears crept its way into her nose, and with another deep swallow, she removed the clips from the back of the sheath dress.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean.” She sniffled, finally tearing her eyes away from the mirror. “Shit, that was wise. How old are you again?”

Alicia giggled, and flashed Darcy a smile over her shoulder before disappearing back into the fitting room and closing the curtain behind her.

* * *

When the day ended, Darcy drove home with her hands shaking and her heart pounding in her throat. The unassuming sedan Dinah Madani had provided her, Frank, and Karen skidded up the dirt path to their house, but even when she parked, she sat in her driveway, her palms pressed to the steering wheel as she tried to get her breathing to slow, the engine still rumbling beneath her. What was the right way to tell them? Blurt it out once she walked in the door, like ripping off a bandage? Or settle them into a sense of calm, and gently run this wild idea by them?

She sighed and turned off the ignition. Should’ve picked up flowers on her way back from town.

Inhaling and exhaling deeply didn’t help her quivering hands turn the key in the front door lock. The test was still pressed into her side, between her skirt and her skin.

But once she crossed the threshold, a pit dropped in her stomach. Frank’s heavy black duffel sat by the doorway.

“Hey,” she said quietly, finding him and Karen sitting silently in the living room. Frank’s hand lay idly on Max’s head, his fingers flexing unevenly against the fur. Karen, in the armchair across the way, had a newspaper in her lap, but her eyes were directed at the floor, one shoe halfway on her foot bouncing against the hardwood. “What’s happening?”

“Fisk is back in Manhattan.” Karen’s voice broke a little, but her expression stayed startlingly flat. Darcy watched her throat bob as she swallowed. “He and Ma Gnucci have taken Little Italy. We think it’s the beginning of a play for the whole city.”

“What?” The word escaped Darcy’s lips along with all the air in her chest. “When - _how_?”

Neither of them answered, but she knew how. The most evil and most dangerous thing about Nicky had been the very same thing that ensured her mother would be safe and taken care of, in exchange for her hand in marriage. His money.

“I’m leavin’ tonight,” Frank said gruffly, kneading the sweet spot behind Max’s ears. “Killin’ that bastard before he can do any more damage. Me ‘n Micro.”

Darcy had met the man who called himself Micro only once or twice, when his family had invited the three of them to dinner at the pleasant little house they had on the edge of New York City. He seemed normal enough, a lanky father with poufing brown hair and a beard that made him look less like a master hacker and more like an absent-minded professor. He was funny, kind. Treated Frank and Karen and Darcy like guests, instead of the dangerous people they were. His whole family, the wife, the children who sent each other snickering glances across the table in between conversation, they all treated the three of them with kindness.

“Frank’s family,” David had explained, before shoveling the dinner his wife and son had prepared in his mouth. “He was here when I couldn’t be, and the big surly bastard got to be a good friend, when he wasn’t all cranky and murderous.”

“He also kissed your wife,” Zach said to his plate with a smirk. Darcy had tried not to let her eyes immediately flit over to Sarah, but the latter had gone tomato red and flung a pea at her son.

“Hey, in my defense,” Frank started off, sending a glance that was both apologetic and mischievous to Leo, beside him, “your mom was the one who kissed _me_.”

“O-kay!” Sarah got to her feet, her chair scraping back against the hardwood. “Who wants dessert?”

By the time the night was over, Darcy hadn’t remembered when she’d last been able to laugh so much. They were a good family, good people. Over the course of only a few meetings, she’d grown to trust them.

Trusting them was a big difference from feeling safe letting Frank go after the Kingpin of Manhattan with David. Knowing that he’d be up against all of Wilson Fisk’s most highly paid, highly trained killers, it was little comfort knowing that Frank’s only backup was a man she’d seen shove pretzel sticks up his nose to imitate a walrus.

And knowing that she and Karen would be sitting here, waiting for him to come back, with Darcy...the way she was.

She got to her feet and settled into the seat closest to Frank, resting a hesitant hand to his cheek. “Don’t leave tonight. Let me make you dinner, let us...just let us have one more night to sleep next to you. Please.”

He leaned into her touch, his eyes slowly falling shut. Darcy felt the muscles of his jaw ripple against her palm, and felt the pieces of her heart struggling to cling together. _Please_ , she whispered, her thumb to the hard ridge of his cheekbone. _Please, just tonight._

“Okay,” Frank rumbled softly, placing his hand over hers. “Okay.”

As she walked toward the kitchen, her body going through the trance-like motions of preparing macaroni and cheese out of the box the way that her mother had done for her when she was little and they were too poor to afford anything else, a stone that beat gently, almost like her heart, settled into the pit of her stomach. Her only consolation to this secret that needed to be kept, the silence she needed to hold at least until the father of their baby returned, was that she was not alone in the kitchen. Frank’s hands on her waist, Karen’s face in her neck, she closed her eyes, and saved the moment in her mind.

When the three of them had eaten as much Kraft mac ‘n cheese as they could stand, Karen took Max to the back patio for his last potty break of the evening and Frank cleared up the kitchen. In her last brittle moment of silence, Darcy snuck to the bathroom and stuffed the pregnancy test to the bottom of the garbage before either of her lovers could notice. She peeled away her work clothes and stepped into a soft satin nightgown that Karen had picked out for her when they first moved in.

It was hard to believe that they’d started their life together at this home more than a year ago, when she was still raw and pink with the wounds her ex-husband had bore on her. Every moment since had only cemented the fact that Frank and Karen could give her more in a single second than Nicky ever could in a lifetime.

The sound of the back door opening and the gate of Max’s playpen creaking shut reminded Darcy to brush the tears away from her eyes. She pulled the plunging front of her nightgown just a little lower, swallowed, and stepped out from their bedroom, ready to lose herself in the people she loved most.

Karen met her eye first, a thin pink glaze blushing over her soft, fair skin, blonde hair curtaining both their faces as she leaned forward to press her forehead, and then her lips, to Darcy’s.

“I love you,” she whispered, her eyes closing blissfully with every touch of their lips, hands finding their way to the tender spot at the back of Karen’s neck. Karen’s fingers bunched at the small of Darcy’s back, the thin material sliding through her fists and inching its way up Darcy’s thighs. “I love you, Karen, so fucking much.”

The dull padding of boots signaled Frank’s finishing the dishes, and Darcy sighed into his touch when he reached for the pair of them, his large, calloused hands a rough and welcome contrast from Karen’s slender, willowy ones. He squeezed Karen between them, one square palm brushing up her blouse as the other came down to settle at the swell of Darcy’s ass, his pinky finding bare flesh. Darcy pulled back a little, wetting her lips, and watched through hooded eyes while Frank buried his face in Karen’s neck, drawing a high keening from her soft pink mouth.

“Come,” Darcy said firmly, pulling Karen by the waist so that Frank would amble forward with her. “Time for bed.”

They obliged, slipping out of their shoes before they could even open the bedroom door, hands and lips tangling in one brilliant blur of light and darkness, smooth curves and sharp angles. Darcy vaguely remembered someone dragging her gown over her head, but it didn’t matter who by the time that she got her hand past the waistband of Frank’s jeans and Karen had dropped her blouse into a puddle on the floor beside their bed.

The three of them tumbled onto the mattress in a pile of limbs and quickly shucked clothing, and before long Darcy had Karen pinned beneath her, one forearm to her slender hips while she mouthed at the tender skin of her thighs, leaving traces of lipstick everywhere she went. Frank had busied himself with one stiffened nipple, the stubble on his chin scraping deliciously against Karen’s flesh. Karen herself had threaded one hand through Frank’s hair and clenched the other around their bedsheets, her voice cutting a soft, high beat through the air. Darcy watched Frank’s lips and fingers tweak her closer to her peak, and drew her tongue in short, roving stripes up and down her clit. Karen wriggled against her grasp, a string of curses coursing through her lips, before Darcy felt her come undone from the inside, two fingers pulsing inside her, Darcy’s mouth pressed unyielding to her sex.

“That a girl,” Frank was saying, though Darcy couldn’t be sure whether which one of them he was talking to, or maybe both of them, but he kept on, over and over, one hand at Karen’s breast and the other in Darcy’s hair, “so beautiful, so fuckin’ perfect…”

Karen’s chest heaved as she came down from her high, taking advantage of Darcy’s loosed grip to grab her by the chin and guide her upwards for a kiss, her tongue heavy and filthy as it searched Darcy’s mouth for her own taste.

“So good for me, Karen,” Darcy purred, sitting back on her haunches and leaning into Frank, sweeping her tongue between his lips so he could have a taste as well. Karen’s brilliant smile sent a soft wave of affection down to her toes, and Darcy framed her face with a gentle hand. “You need a minute or you okay to keep going, honey?”

She pushed up onto her elbows, butt scooting back toward the headboard. “I’ll take a second. Wanna watch you.”

Darcy grinned like the Cheshire cat, pushing her hands onto Frank’s bare chest, the muscles rippling under her fingers as she guided him onto his back. His teeth bore down onto his bottom lip in a half-smirk, and Darcy, in her lust, swung one leg over his hip and ground into him to feel his hardness. Something like a grunt came out, his rough fingertips digging into the backs of her thighs.

“You wanna take care of me with your mouth or your cock, soldier?” she breathed, only gasping a little when he cradled her tender breast with his palm.

“Think I need’a be inside of you, ma’am,” he rumbled, bucking up toward her while she rolled her hips down again into him. She rewarded him by grabbing one curled fist and bringing it to her lips, letting his thumb part the crease of her mouth and hollowing her cheeks around it as her tongue rolled a lazy circle around the digit.

He tightened his grip on her thigh, and Darcy relished the soft layer of pain. She let his thumb go with a tiny pop. “Will you be ready for both of us when Karen’s okay to sit on your face?”

“Yes, ma’am.” His voice was starting to come out strained, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

Darcy peeled away her panties, only letting Frank shove his boxers halfway down his thighs before she was on her knees, sliding the blunt head of his cock through the slick line between her legs. His head rolled backwards into the mattress, cursing under his breath while she teased out his desire, finally lowering herself onto him inch by painfully slow inch.

He stretched her deliciously, a guttural groan seeping from the innermost parts of his chest as he filled her, Darcy’s hands flat on his chest to show him that he wasn’t allowed yet to fuck up into her. She gave an experimental rock of the hips when he was halfway in, making a show of running her tongue over her teeth until another pair of hands cupped her breasts, these ones much smaller than Frank’s, soft and slender and chipped with sky blue nail polish.

She leaned into Karen’s touch, allowing herself to sink completely onto Frank until he was fully seated inside her, pulsing with the need to rock, move, do _something._

Somewhere between the slow and desperate rhythm of her figure rolling him impossibly deeper into her, between the three shades of skin rubbing and touching and clawing and holding, Darcy squeezed her eyes shut, their names on her lips and their faces burned into her brain like this. Some time after she had laid her claim on both of them, straddled across Frank’s hips and hand buried in Karen’s hair, her body, drawn tight like an arrow against a bowstring, pitched forward as she shuddered out her release.

(Later, when her throat was hoarse from chanting her love over and over, and her face was streaked with sweat and mascara, she would open her eyes to both of them holding her up, having gone over an edge she didn’t know she could reach. The last thing she remembered before the hot white wave of bliss had rolled over her was Karen’s mouth at her ear, Darcy’s nipples between her long pale fingers, whispering how much she loved her.)

Once Darcy’s legs had stopped feeling like jelly and Frank was capable of pushing himself up into a sitting position, then finally a standing one, the three of them cleaned up in a punch-drunk haze, rinsed away the evidence of their lovemaking, and, too tired to find their way into pajamas, collapsed into their mattress as tangled as they’d come to it the first time. With Frank’s head on her chest and Karen curled to her side, Darcy combed her fingers through her lovers’ hair and closed her eyes.

“You’re beautiful,” she whispered, before sleep could carry them away, “so beautiful.”

* * *

Sleep didn’t last too long. As a pang of panic rattled through her ribcage, Darcy only caught a glimpse of the glowing red digits - 4:13 - before her feet made a mad dash for the master bathroom and she emptied her dinner into the toilet as quietly as she could.

Apparently, morning sickness did not account for what normal mortals classified ‘morning.’

She let the sink run for an extra thirty seconds or so after brushing her teeth, and made sure that the light was off before slipping back into the bedroom. Frank and Karen were still asleep, now with the extra room in the middle of the bed, Karen had pressed her feet into Frank’s kidneys. Darcy smiled. She couldn’t make herself crawl back into the sheets with them quite yet, though. Wasn’t sure if this wave of nausea would pass. So she tiptoed through the hallway and set on a silent kettle for a cup of tea.

Her hips still ached, and it wasn’t until she settled into the barstool at the kitchen island that she realized where she was, why she’d just been throwing up. As if her body was perfectly acclimated to carrying around this little bundle of cells, and her brain was too focused on getting it what it needed to realize the weight of the situation. She was still very much pregnant, and still very much hadn’t told either of the other parents involved.

One cup of tea turned into two, turned into a third. It was like one of those nights she remembered being seven or eight, catching a stomach bug and getting sick in the middle of the night, watching cheap cable or infomercials until the sickness had waned enough to go back to sleep. Instead of television, she listened to the quiet humming of Max’s snores, and eventually, the sound of Frank extracting himself from the bed and trying to pack without waking Karen.

He emerged from their bedroom not long later, dark jeans and a hoodie, a beanie that covered the curly black hair she so loved to string her fingers through. She remembered meeting him, his face bloody and bruised, and wondered if she’d just fallen in love with them then.

“Hey,” she said, setting down her mug.

“Hey.”

The air felt thick with what he needed to do. Darcy knew, there wasn’t a day Frank would rest as long as Wilson Fisk was still alive. Karen had told her once, while Frank was chasing down a lead in Harlem, that Fisk had promised to end her, that she’d given him as much ammunition as he needed to strike her down where she stood. And she’d walked away.

Frank didn’t need to say anything. This was where the dynamic was different. Karen brought them out of their shells, brought light and made them laugh. Touches turned to kisses with her, to joy and crinkled eyes and rosy cheeks. Even when she was dangerous, or angry, or full of fire, she made the words, soothing ones or apologies, come bubbling out of Darcy like lava.

Darcy and Frank, they could have a whole conversation without speaking a single word. This was what they did here and now, mostly, his goodbye sealed in the heavy fall of his hands to her thighs, squeezing down while his eyes fell shut and he pressed his forehead down to hers.

And then it was over.

Only when he had bent to wrap his hands around the duffel bag by the door did Darcy speak again. “Frank.”

He turned his head, a different man from the one who’d been begging her last night, his eyes dark with something she couldn’t place, something that hurt.

“You come back to us. Please.”

She watched his throat bob. He dipped his chin down toward his chest, and wouldn’t meet her eye when he answered. “I will.”

His boots crunched when they hit the gravel outside the front door. Darcy drained the last of her third cup, rinsed the dregs in the sink, and slipped back into bed, lying awake in Karen’s warm embrace.

Once the reaches of daylight stretched pink across the sky, filtering through the blinds, Darcy didn’t have to pretend that she was asleep anymore. Karen stirred beside her, soft wisps of blond hair over her forehead. Darcy pushed onto one elbow.

“Hey,” Karen said, groggy and husky and golden. “Play hooky with me today? I’ll make breakfast.”

Darcy’s stomach rumbled before she could open her mouth. She and Karen giggled together, one blissful break in the tension, and danced around each other toward the stove. Karen got the griddle heated up, and Darcy grabbed Max’s leash to take him outside to pee again.

In the front she tapped out a text to Peggy, making an excuse about feeling worse today, that she’d try to see the doctor as soon as she could, and she was sorry that someone would have to cover her - she’d pick up their next emergency day anyone needed. As Max padded around to sniff the trees out front that he’d already sniffed about a hundred times in the last few days, her brain was slowly coming back together. 

She would need to see a doctor soon. Think of a plan. She didn’t know that she could look a child in the face with Frank’s eyes or his rare smile, if he...if he didn’t come back to them. She didn’t know if Karen could take that either.

And even if - when, she kept reminding herself fiercely, _when_ \- he came back, the chances of him wanting to do this again, fatherhood, with all it had cost him the last time...what if she wanted the baby and they didn’t? What if she had already attached herself so earnestly to this thing that was little more than a cluster of life that it permeated her down to the last sinewy pieces of her soul, and they didn’t want it? Didn’t want her anymore, because she did?

If this baby lived, it would never know a single grandparent between the three of them. Her heart ached with missing her mother, her oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and her lopsided grin. Somehow, now, when she thought she was finally saved, Darcy was alone again.

Not bound by Nicky, or his money, or the foul shadow of death. By life, a secret that she couldn’t bear to let out of the small tin box she’d forged for it at the back of her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> "New Soul" belongs to Yael Naim. Let me know what you think <3


End file.
